Every database in Starry Night has label options. To access these options, open the Options pane and click on the name of the database you are interested in. This will open the “display options” dialog box for this database. The label options will be at the bottom of the dialog box

Video Demonstration:

Watch the video to see how Options are navigated and selected in Starry Night software.

Accessing Label Options:

In Options ---> Other ---> Put the arrow/cursor over the category Abell Clusters ---> It will change! You will now see a rectangle box around the words category Abell Clusters... Click the box!

Most databases share the following label options:

1. Appearance

For all databases, you have the option of changing the label appearance.

Dropboxes allow you to change the font and size of the label, and choose whether you want the labels to be in bold or italics.

2. Colour

This determines the colour that labels appear onscreen. Click on the colour bars to choose a new label colour. Many users use different label colours for each of the major databases, making it easier to quickly distinguish between planets, stars, and deep space objects.

3. Number of Labels

A slider allows you to change the number of objects that are labeled onscreen for each database. If the slider is near the left edge, only the brightest members of the database will be labeled. As you move the slider farther to the right, dimmer objects will be labeled as well.

Some other label options appear only for certain databases. These options are listed below:

4. Label by Magnitude Slider

This is an option for planets/moons, comets, asteroids, and artificial satellites (when open, it replaces the “Number of Labels” slider).

In Options ---> Solar System ---> put the arrow/cursor over the category Planets-Moons ---> It will change! You will now see a rectangle box around the category Planets-Moons... Click the box!

By default, Starry Night will not label an object if it is too dim to appear on screen. You can change this option. For example, you may wish to know the position of all the planets. Pluto and Neptune are generally too dim to be seen, but by selecting this option, you will still be able to see where they are in the sky.

5. Star Label Options

In Options ---> Stars---> Put the arrow/cursor over the category Stars ---> It will change! You will now see a rectangle box around the category Stars Options... Click the box!

The “Show” dropbox in the Star Options dialog box allows you to label a star by its common name, catalogue number, Bayer letter, or Flamsteed number. Most common names are thousands of years old and have an Arabic origin. The classification scheme for Bayer letters and Flamsteed numbers is discussed in “Bayer” on page 91. You can also choose to show the magnitude of stars, an option that is particularly useful for printed charts, as you will often use the brightness of an object to help you determine if you are looking at the right object.

6. Compass Points

In Options ---> Local View --> put the arrow/cursor over the category Local Horizon (Lake) ---> It will change! You will now see a rectangle box around the category Local Horizon (Lake) Options... Click the box!

Compass points can be deselected and the font type/color/size changed.

Disregard my first posting. While the info given to me did not really apply to the problem I have been experiencing, it did give me the idea to delve into the, "preferences" for the program thoroughly. After I did that I was able to solve the problem I said I was experiencing. Though I did get the color of the text used in the HUD, which makes things much easier to read, I am still having problem with the text and some aspect of the colors used in the program being close enough to the same ones that there seems to be no easy solution to what I am experiencing. The only thing that would eliminate my problem would be to have the mouse fly-over / HUD thing would be to have that information presented in a pop-up box whose background is white or some other color that totally blocks-out anything from the background enough so that the text from the HUD / mouse flyover could be read without the problem of being blotted-out due to similar colors that are unavoidably-similar between text and background color.

If you look at SN HUD 1, at the bottom of the panel is an option to change the size of the font, and the colour of the font. For this example, I changed the size to 16 and the colour to white. If you look at SN HUD 2 you can see the result. The font appears much larger and brighter. Do you think that the same result would help you to read the text against the background?

This must be foe the pro version. I just got this with my Orion telescope and I do not have an options panel. I can not believe the this simple feature is not on this version. This version is called sterry night Orion special edition. I'm I missing a simple step or is it really that bad that Orion could not have this simple feature in their edition.

I bought Starry Night Pro Plus 6 online last week. Previously I have had Pro 4.5.2. The only annoying problem I had with 4.5.2 was with the data base labels like the NGC's and Messiers not showing. This problem was caused by a newer version of QuickTime being on my computer. Backdating the version solved that.

Now I have Pro plus 6 and I have the same problem. I have checked QT and it is the recommended version. Now I can go into the Options tab and toggle the labels on and then I can access them from the top toolbar but I have to do this every time I sign on the program. I have saved the settings when I close but the labels still have to toggled on each time. I'm not impressed by this. Now I consider this a glitch of some kind which must have a fix. If it's the way the program works then the programmer ought to have his head slammed in a door a couple time before he writes a fix for this. So what is the solution to keeping the label options I want working when I start the program without this extra step I have to do now.